June 11, 2009

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Democratic Gov. Brad Henry has signed into law bills banning sex-selection abortions and human cloning. The sex-selection prohibition also requires doctors to report to the state the reasons women choose abortion and complications that occur as a result of the procedure.

The anti-cloning measure prohibits therapeutic and reproductive cloning and according to bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, “is the first true human cloning ban to pass in a long time.” Pro-lifers have pushed for a true cloning ban at the federal level but have been unable to find enough support to ban therapeutic, or research, cloning — cloning an embryo in order to harvest its stem cells. The extraction of stem cells from an embryo destroys the days-old human being. Therapeutic cloning supporters sometimes call the procedure “somatic cell nuclear transfer,” simply the scientific name for cloning.